![dawg and bear in heart [cartoon]](dawgnbearicon.gif)
Julie found me through PlanetOut and we had a couple dates, even though she lived in Boston and I lived in Tampa. We connected strongly as queer Jews; on our first date we went to Kadosh, an Israeli movie about an ultra-Orthodox couple who are forced to divorce because they're infertile. The date was on Long Island, where I was staying with my uncle for a couple weeks. She was staying with her late father's girlfriend and didn't drive, so I picked her up in one of my uncle's cleaning vans. It was heavy as hell and the driver's door didn't open, and it smelled like whatever is sucked out of rich people's carpets. That we had subsequent dates is a testimony to our mutual attraction, and we remained friends even after she moved the Dawg into her condo.
I met the Dawg the day I helped Julie move some of her father's old things. I drove a U-Haul from a storage unit on Long Island to her place in Massachusetts. There I met a stout, jolly, football-playing butch of the proto-transsexual variety. He (and that seemed the right pronoun from the day I met him) wanted me to smoke him up and was sad that I didn't have any. The next time I visited Julie, I brought dope so I could smoke the Dawg up. On another visit at Passover, I brought Jaice and a flu, and the Dawg demonstrated his famous skills with children while I took many naps.
He got the nickname because he'd "dog" anything (dog: pursue, esp. for sex) and because he likes to roll in fun sticky messes. All dogs love Kevin, and Kevin loves all animals but especially dogs. They are his familiar species, with whom he identifies. He got the nickname sometime before he met Julie, who delighted in and embellished upon the nickname.
Kevin shares other traits in common with dogs. He is trapped in what passes for canine morality: he cannot lie, he is loyal to the ones he loves, he will hurt no one, yet he will leave no crumb behind. He is not to be trusted alone with food, no matter how recently or well fed. He has very sensitive hearing and sense of smell. Western Mass has been as soothing in its smells and sounds as Brooklyn was painful for him. He is sensitive and cannot hide how he feels or what he's thinking for more than a couple seconds. He is the Full Disclosure Dawg. His complete, even TMI honesty quickly earned my trust.
Kevin has a special touch with people, either borne of or honed to perfection in his extensive human services work history. He is very people-oriented, engaging and protective with children, tender and solicitous of old and sick people. For no particular reason, he finds himself living with hearing-impaired people (Julie and I are both hard of hearing, and a former housemate is deaf.) and worked for a long time with multiply-handicapped children at Perkins School for the Blind, among other schools in the Boston area. Just so you see how far back the service dog theme runs, he played Nana in an elementary school production of "Peter Pan."
Balancing his saintlike Animal Hero status in domestic areas, there is the Dawg who likes to roll in it and will hump anyone. But he likes almost everyone, including everyone he humps, so it's hard to fault him for it.
Unlike my anything-goes bisexual freelovin' self, the Dawg is almost entirely homosexual. When he lived as a female he partnered with other butch women. As a transman he loves other men, but particularly transmen. I don't keep my Dawg on a leash. He likes to roll around with other boys (and the occasional girl) and so do I. But we always comes home to each other.
Being a human Dawg he gets to have other habits that you know a dawg would want to engage in if it could. He loves drugs and sex and driving fast.
When we first got to know each other on those smoking tours of Arlington, we talked about ourselves, and I wasn't surprised that this butch girlfriend of my pal Julie was very curious to hear about the female-to-male physical transition. I told him what I and others I knew have done with testosterone and chest surgery: assurance of passing as male in everyday life but little hope of a passing penis.
It didn't take long before I heard again from Kevin: he'd chosen that name, and did I like it? My ex-husband's name is Kevin, too, and like this one, is a big blond jolly guy. It would appear that I was developing a type. Kevin was excited about True Spirit, and we would hang out together and I thought, probably have sex. Everyone does at True Spirit. After having gone a couple years, I barely attended the workshops: going was about being at a bizarro version of a West Virginia family reunion, where the family resemblance is of being short and stocky, with sparse facial hair and a baby face.
I was in a rocky relationship, but it was also a poly one. Without deciding to, I fell in love with Kevin that weekend and in subsequent dramatic visits in New York and Boston. I broke up with Heather and she moved into the other bedroom of our apartment. Kevin moved in, followed by Heather's new boyfriend Tim, and with our roommate Mel and two cats, we more than filled our four-room railroad apartment. After a couple months, Heather and Tim moved out and far away, and the tenor of the apartment relaxed. We had friends over, including Mel's co-workers at the Dungeon, to smoke and sit around half-naked playing cards. We lived like filthy heathens and loved it.
We both suffered the health consequences of some aspects of our lifestyle: not the perky young women, but the nocturnal hours, bad food, and smoke had to be faced. I had high cholesterol and got bronchitis every couple months. Kevin had edema, thrush, and sores that didn't heal. We quit smoking cigarettes together, cold turkey, and a few months later radically altered our diet to comply with a philosophy of food Kevin syncretized and called "wood." Kevin bought me a bike to match his, and we started taking rides over the Williamsburg Bridge. We'd go to the Green Market in Union Square, stop at Monster Sushi for lunch, finish our shopping at Whole Foods in Chelsea, and bike our groceries back over the bridge home. But despite all the outdoors fun, NYC remained too artificially stimulating, and we sought a new place to live.
An old acquaintance and member of the small society of transmen (Julie says there are only six transmen and the rest is done with mirrors) was looking to let a room in his house outside Northampton, and we moved in. It was a great place to start from, meet interesting and friendly people, and learn the area.
Our plan was to move to western Mass, find jobs, and get our own place. With the job market being what it is, it took us several months to do that, but we finally both got good jobs and moved into an apartment of our own in August, 2005. We have our friends over often, cook huge meals, and generally enjoy and appreciate the heck out of having our own, beautiful home. From here, we're building stability for our future: saving to replace our ten-year-old Civic, and someday buy a house with land. Living in Massachusetts means we can get married if we want to, and we've said we will, but aren't making any firm plans in that direction yet: while we both want the legal protections that being married would provide, those protections are fairly limited, and there's still the tax advantages of not getting hitched....
I love my Dawg. We're happy and stable and continue to meet the challenges to our relationship head-on, by discussing them until we're both satisfied with the outcome. We're still successfully negotiating polyamory, even when it's tough, as well as every other challenge couples (and transsexuals, and people living with their mental illnesses, and non-custodial parents, etc etc) face. It's really good to have another grown-up to share my life with. It'd be hard to face doing them all without the incredible payoff of being in a loving relationship. I'm glad I don't have to. I'm very lucky to have my Dawg.
Updated 11/25/2006